Amanda exclusively opens up to EW about how being on the show and a liberating divorce helped her identity journey: "I'm going to advocate for myself."
Please make your way to the conference room, because the queen of the board room has a special company-wide message: Fan-favorite RuPaul's Drag Race season 16 star Amanda Tori Meating has come out as trans!
In an exclusive interview with EW's Quick Drag podcast (below), the New York City-based queen opens up to EW about her headline-making turn on the show so far — and, in reflecting on tension with fellow cast member Plane Jane, reveals how a moment of liberation from a painful divorce (as well as the experience of being part of the Drag Race family) helped her along her identity journey.
"When we were filming Drag Race I was about five months fresh out of a divorce," Amanda recalls of filming the show in 2023, explaining that the experience of being "bullied" by her ex-spouse ultimately retrained her focus on putting herself first — including as she navigated drag queen drama on season 16.
"I think [Plane] caught me at the sweet spot of my healing journey," she continues. "I'm not giving you the response you're looking for, whatever that was. I'm sitting here like a real f---ing person and I'm telling you, 'I do not like this, please stop.'"
She also remembers that her divorce partly stemmed from her then-husband's unwillingness to be with her because of her "gender exploration journey," as Amanda describes it.
Amanda — who joins a number of other Drag Race alums who've come out as trans in recent months, including Adore Delano, Jade Jolie, and Madame LaQueer — says she considered herself to be non-binary for around four years before competing on Drag Race, but ultimately didn't feel right identifying as such, and continued "figuring out where exactly I sit on the trans spectrum," she explains.
"It wasn't at all supported by my partner, and it ended up being a big part of why I had to leave, because he didn't want to be with a trans person. I was in a bad place about it, mentally, for a while, but you get to a point where you're like, I have to do what's right for me, and that involved getting out of that," she says.
"I showed up to Drag Race in this space of, I'm going to advocate for myself, I'm going to stand up for myself, I'm not going to allow myself to be victimized in the way that I feel like I have been in the past, pre-Drag Race. [I was] in this environment for the first time where everyone's calling me Amanda and not my government name, and realizing how good that felt, and I started to feel a bit more comfortable in the reformation of my identity."
She observes that such feelings likely exacerbated her reaction to Plane's jabs about her looks in the Werk Room and in Untucked, which resulted in some clapbacks on set — and more intense exchanges between the two on social media in recent weeks.
Still, Amanda says the overall process of filming RuPaul's Drag Race with her sisters amplified her feelings of self-acceptance.
"It was kind of jarring to go from that environment where everyone is calling me Amanda and she/her-ing me, to being called by my government name again, and he/him," she says of heading home at the end of production. "I was like, this is very much not correct for me. That experience helped push me out of the nest a little bit and crack the egg."
Today, with the show heading into its fifth episode this Friday, Amanda says she's comfortably "arrived to a point where I feel like I'm transitioning," though she doesn't know if she's ready to call herself a trans woman just yet.
"I feel like that's a bit of an achievement that I've yet to score, but I refer to myself as a t-girl at the moment," she says.
That newfound comfort in her skin is clear as she assesses what might've, in another instance, posed a problem for her, as she brushes off a recent wave of internet posts circulating images of her out of drag from several years ago — which EW will not share here.
"There's going to be a lot of s--- flung my way with the whole trans experience, and thats's something where I can choose to let it upset me, or choose to let it be water off a duck's back. If people are thirsting over pictures of me and how I used to look before transitioning, then that's fine, that's fierce for them, I guess," she states. "I'm not really interested in hooking up with somebody who's more attracted to who I was four or five years ago. If you want to get your rocks off to it? Sure."
Well, you heard the boss: meeting adjourned, so Amanda Tori Meating can flourish.
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